


deeper than skin

by cerealmilk



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hugs, Injury Recovery, Team as Family, trini is a sad gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 03:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10454217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerealmilk/pseuds/cerealmilk
Summary: In the aftermath of Rita's defeat, they mend.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is just a short little thing i wrote after watching the movie the other day. they're pretty dang cute ngl but writing them is surprisingly difFICULT for me. ;^;
> 
> i put it as gen bc it can be read platonic and not and i wasn't sure which i liked more.
> 
> EDIT: switched it to f/f because im an indecisive shit
> 
> unbeta'ed and proofread by me only once at one in the morning. nothing could go wrong.

After the defeat of Goldar and Rita, Jason led his team back to the crevasse that led back to their impromptu headquarters. Megazord disbanded, and each ranger brought their own zord to its designated place within the underwater cove.

Trini, personally, was glad for the solace escorting her colossal, four-legged metal monster brought her. The walk was silent, the haze of victory fading and casting the rangers in a silent shadow.

They had lost much, that day. Trini wasn't even sure if her family was still alive and had not the guts to find out. Not yet. Her body was sore, bruises across every inch of skin and cuts that burned with the lingering heat of Goldar's fumes.

As soon as her sabertooth-like zord was safely parked and she had managed to clamber out without causing herself too tremendous an amount of pain, the armor that had surely saved her life seven times by now dissipated. The air of the cove was cool and moist, and the shallow, thin cuts she had received stung tenfold at the exposure.

A hesitant hand landed on her shoulder. She turned to see Billy, _alive_ and whole and soaked with sweat, sporting a heavy bruise on his temple. "I have a first-aid kit in my backpack. I left it in the cove," he said, no louder than a whisper but somehow still loud. "Come on. Let's patch each other up before we head home."

 _Home._ It was strange, because this place, this hidden alien fortress was more home to her than hers had ever been.

Nonetheless, in a numb sort of motion, Trini nodded and turned to follow.

 

The others were waiting for them in the central room, Zordon's face poking out of the immense, moving wall. Zack noticed their arrival first and waved. His lip bore a nasty split. "Hey, crazy girl," he laughed, and it sounded forced. He was tired— they all were.

Trini took a moment to take in the scene. Zack was pressing a gauze patch over what she could only assume was a cut on Jason's cheek. Jason himself offered a small wave but no more. Kimberly lingered off to the side, heavily favoring her left foot.

"'Sup," she replied, and her voice was hoarse and dry and filled with nothing but sheer exhaustion. She wondered, absentmindedly, what she must look like, if everything hurt the way it did, achy and pounding and strained.

Billy clapped his hands together. "Okay, so, um. I'm sure we're all plenty hurt so we'll divide the kit in half. Kim and Trini can take one half, and Jason, Zack and I will take the other."

Trini turned to him, squinting. When had the room gotten so bright? Maybe it was a concussion.

"Why?" she asked, and she felt like the answer should be obvious but she was honestly too tired to even try to come up with an answer.

Billy crouched to start divvying up supplies, wincing as he did so. "W-Well—"

"Because I've got a nice cut right above my crotch, and I'm sure you don't wanna be in the room when I clean it," Zack cut in.

Oh. That made sense. It was for the physicals, beneath the clothes.

"Gotcha," she said, and took the bag that Billy offered. Quickly, she sought Kimberly's gaze, motioning with her head that they head out to the hallway so that the boys could have some privacy.

Kimberly shrugged but obliged to the wordless request, moving from the wall to limp to Trini's position, with the shorter girl meeting her halfway to offer her assistance. She may be an asshole, but she wasn't heartless, and Kimberly had saved her life plenty in the fight against Rita and maybe she was trying to be a nice teammate because, maybe, just maybe, she cared.

 _Then again, you said it yourself— you'd die for them,_ she reminded herself as she helped the taller girl lower herself to the floor of the hallway until she could sit against the wall.

"Thanks," Kimberly said, gesturing to the empty space beside her, and Trini rolled her eyes but relented.

"D'you wanna go first or me?" she drawled, rubbing at the disheveled braids along the side of her head in a weak gesture of self-comfort.

Kimberly was already picking through the bag Billy had given them. "I just sprained my ankle," she said, "so I'll go ahead and patch you up."

Trini shrugged. "Fine by me."

The taller girl quirked a brow. "Well, I need to know where you're hurt. Come on, strip."

She blinked, sleep heavy on her eyelids. "Oh. Right. Okay," she mumbled, slipping off her jacket with its singed sleeves and peeling off her sweaty, sticky t-shirt. The sight beneath was not pretty thing to look at.

A whole myriad of bruises everywhere she could see, claw marks and cuts around her face, forearms, and neck, and it hurt when she moved her right shoulder. Probably from the abrupt backhand she had thrown, too fast and too hard.

Kimberly winced. Trini sighed.

"It's not pretty, is it."

"A bit of an understatement, but yes," the pink ranger replied, taking a bottle of alcohol and a cotton swab from the bag. "I'm going clean your face first. Hold still."

The alcohol-coated swab stung lightly as it passed over small cuts and collected dry blood. Kimberly was surprisingly careful— her hands softer and gentler than Trini had anticipated. It made her wonder if the taller girl had done this before, somewhere in the shadows of her hidden history, but now was not the time to ask and Trini was too tired to give much of a damn.

"I'm gonna take care of these cuts on your neck, next," the taller girl said, trading out the swab with a clean one and renewing the alcohol coat.

"Okay," Trini responded, fisting her hands in her pants. "I might curse."

Kimberly laughed wearily, and then she took the cotton swab and gently pressed it against the cut on Trini's neck. Immediately, the smaller woman hissed and recoiled, a hand flying upwards to snatch Kimberly's wrist, holding it tight and preventing the taller girl from continuing with her ministrations. Her heart was racing, pain lancing from the cut throughout her collarbone, eyes squeezed shut.

"I'm sorry," Kimberly said, surprised.

"It's okay," Trini whispered, gaze lowered, brows twisted in pain. "It's not you."

Rather, it was the memory of Rita, pinning Trini against the wall all over again, clawed fingers digging into her trachea, the stench of old blood and fish filling her nose. It was the cold wetness of the sorceress's hand over where the cuts now lay, as opposed to Kimberly's warm, human touch.

Trini hadn't told anyone, yet. All she had managed to share was that she'd almost died to a crazy fish lady and that the crazy fish lady in question was about to blow their world to smithereens. She hadn't told them what the nightmarish woman had done to her, what scars she had left sundered into her brain, scars that no eye could see.

Kimberly looked at her for a moment before speaking. "Do you want to talk about it?" she queried, suddenly hushed, as if the boys would overhear somehow.

Trini shook her head. "Yes. No? I don't know. I just— when you touched my neck, I thought of her. Sorry if I hurt your wrist."

Kimberly frowned, eyes bright with concern. "What happened to you? What did she do?"

Trini had to look away. "I said it before, didn't I? She almost killed me. One minute I was asleep, then I was waking up with ice water on my face and a hand around my throat." Talking about it made her feel vulnerable, and she drew her knees to her chest. "She— she tossed me around a bit. Threatened me. Singled me out as the weak link. Wanted me to beg for my life." She managed a small, dry chuckle. "I head-butted her. Hard."

Kimberly's gaze softened. "I'm sorry you had to go through that."

Trini wrapped her arms around her knees, still unable to bring herself to look at her friend. "It wasn't your fault. Nothing you could have done. I just wasn't strong enough."

"Oh, for crying out— look at me, Trini."

Trini scowled, but did not comply.

" _Trini._ Come on. You can trust me."

Trini let out a short, sardonic laugh. "I know. I know I can, princess— I trusted you with my life back there. Multiple times." And with that, she dragged her gaze upwards to look at her fellow ranger, who asked a silent question with those open, doe-like eyes.

She wasn't good at this— at opening up. Connecting and bonding weren't things she had found necessary to basic survival in her rather hellish household, but Kimberly wasn't pushing, only guiding, and Trini figured that she'd come far enough that turning back was really just kind of stupid at this point, so she soldiered on.

With a sigh of relent, she wetted her lips before speaking, her voice a low and hoarse rasp. "I just... I was scared. I thought I was going to die. Those kinds of things are hard to process rationally."

Kimberly's hand wandered upwards to lay over the claw marks on her neck, and the other ranger offered her a smile. "Believe me, I know," she said. "And I want help how I can, if you'll let me."

Trini snorted, trying her hardest not to curl into the touch— how long had it been, since she had felt so safe, so vulnerable? She was starved for this, and she wanted it so much it hurt. Her and Kimberly were close, closer to each other than the other rangers, and God, she just wanted to say it out loud but she had no words.

"Sorry," she said instead, knees relaxing, hands into her lap.

Kimberly paused, searching for her gaze, the hand on her neck reaching out to brush the hair from her face. "For what?"

Trini shrugged again. "Not sure. Just felt like apologizing. I just— feel like I could've done more. For the team."

A terrible thought occurred to her, one of Billy's dead body when they had hauled him out from beneath the boat dock.

"I got Billy killed. Almost the rest of us, too."

Kimberly's grip on her shoulder was hard and firm. "Don't you dare," she snapped. "This was not your fault, Trini. Just because you do a bad thing, it doesn't make you a bad person. It's okay, Trini. I don't blame you. _None_ of us blame you. So even if you blame yourself, I'm not gonna let you wallow in self-pity or whatever it is you're wallowing in." The pink ranger smirked. "You don't have to do this alone. Not like I'd let you, anyways."

Trini's heart tripped. She was acutely aware, not for the first time, of how close she and Kimberly had grown.

"Fuck you for always being right," she mumbled, half of her tempted to curl up into her safe ball of protection, the other half tempted to bury herself in the pink ranger's arms and never let go. It was odd, having someone believe in her, to accept her for her mistakes and her doubts. Her family certainly hasn't taught her anything about acceptance and, honestly, she'd expected the power rangers to be equally harsh. She should have known that such a narrow view was sure to be wrong, but she hadn't ever known anything else other than labels and pretending and cold, hard silence.

In a burst of the desperate and sheer need for physical human contact, she launched herself at Kimberly, arms wrapping tight around her neck, and yeah, shit, this was something Trini had needed for a long, long time.

"Thanks," she said, and pretended that her voice wasn't strangled, that her chest wasn't warm, that the hands at her waist weren't present and comforting, rubbing small circles into abused skin.

"Sure thing, Trini," Kimberly murmured, and maybe it was that easy, to her— maybe, and only maybe, Trini didn't have to do this alone.

**Author's Note:**

> dude i hope the trini/kimberly tag just explodes because i'm love them but if i have to write everything for them i might cry. we seem to be doing well tho so i'm not worried. which is super! they deserve it.
> 
> \- ace.


End file.
